The long vowels (written as if they were doubled short vowels: aa ee ii oo uu)
are treated specially: if two words are alike except for a vowel length contrast,
the word with the long vowel follows the word with the short vowel. For example,
ban 'bob, dip'
precedes
baan 'knife'
in a dictionary. Otherwise, short and long vowels are not distinguished as far
as ordering is concerned -- so, for example,
deeje 'bean soup'
precedes
dekhe 'oar'
because j precedes kh.

(The order of words in untransliterated form is quite different, but follows
the same general principles.)

Alternatively, words in Sinampaiton may be alphabeticized letter by letter as are
words in an English dictionary.

All languages have phonotactic constraints: rules on the placement of phonemes
(sound units) next to each other and in relation to word boundaries. For
example, in English the phoneme sequence /gm/ may occur inside a word
(e.g., pragmatic), but not at the beginning or end of a word. (Words such as
paradigm don't count as counterexamples, since the letter g is silent
and hence doesn't represent a phoneme.)

The basic phonological structure of a word in Sinampaiton is fairly restrictive;
vowels and consonants are allowed only in the combinations listed above, and a word
is basically a sequence of CV(N) pairs (where C is a single consonantal phoneme, e.g.,
j or pr, V may be a short vowel, long vowel, or diphthong and N is a nasal)
with or without a final n. In EBNF notation, a word looks like this: